He had renters in them to cover the payment and the bills for 3-4 years or more.

He's been selling one home every six months now. One of the houses is just a general ranch on a decent street/neighborhood. He bought it for $62k, insurance put roof and siding on it after a hail storm.

He sold it for $199k. There were multiple offers. This one was a cash buy.

Ditto 3d. I think this particular ad is a bunch of snake oil salesmen that use the same ad track, just changing around the city names. House flipping by the competent has always been a viable business, and at times very lucrative. These so called seminars being advertised are probably useless and just a way to capitalize on the gullible.

I've been hearing that for quite a while. Since 2012 at least. Then again, there's probably some truth to it in my region. In Seattle area you can't buy a decent home for less than about $750k and people frequently offer OVER the asking price and real estate is going up 12-14%/year. Let that sink in. It's crazy. You buy an 800sf home for $750,000 rent it out for 12 months to cover the mortgage, then sell it in 4 days for $850,500. In Yakima, the 'poor' side of Washington, home prices have gone up, but not that much. Seattle has rising demand and falling supply. The result of that equation is skyrocketing home prices. If you're not earning at least $80k/year in Seattle, you're not going to get very far, you won't be able to save much money for retirement, and you're probably just barely getting by. Because supply is so short, people in Seattle are trying to flip homes elsewhere to make a buck. The result is that I've had several unsolicited offers for my home (that's not for sale) that were reasonable offers but not enough to make me pickup and move. So it seems that people are buying 'weekend' homes in Cle Elum, Ellensburg, Yakima for $200,000 that would be $1.5million in Seattle. Then they live in a shoebox 5 days/week while in Seattle.

I know a number of people that do this sort of thing as a side business. The basics:
1- they are VERY handy/capable people and already own all the tools.
2- They do a majority of the work themselves (or with a partner).
3- They rent the property out and then sell it when the market rises enough.
4- This is not their day job.

I'm in Podunk, nowhere Midwest and the average time from listing to sale for residential single family homes is 6 days. In my 25 years here I have not seen the practice of bidding above asking price but it is now quite common. Our shortage is simply no turn over-- decent job market and very reasonable cost of living-- folks buy and stay put until retirement.

Realize that the flipping shows are generally at least a year behind the actual market. It really depends on what the local foreclosure market is like. Most areas that are growing have flipped all the voreclosed houses were dumped in the 2007-2010 crash.

I had a chance at an amazing house but declined because the bank had hidden a whole house plumbing problem (along with a possible long term mold issue) and I didn't know a plumber in that county that I trusted to bid and complete a job like that promptly. The person with the second highest bid flipped it in five months and sold it for about 85% profit.

The house two down the street that has sat vacant owned by the bank since 2010 or so finally sold. Whoever bought put it in a dumpster and is building new.
Not much on the market around here right now.

Years ago they used to advertise how to get rich flipping houses on late night/early morning TV. I did it, you can too. Let me show you how. Just three easy payments of XXX. Hurry as there are limited seats and there aren't many left.

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A nice young couple bought the kinda rundown old house next door right as the first housing bubble burst, but they knew what they were doing. They turned a very medium average home into one of the nicest in the area - a very highly sought area within an easy bike ride of Downtown Sacramento (HUGE gov't district). They turned a 200K home into a wonderful $700k home - took about 8 months. He had a fulltime job and she a partime job - their off time was working on the house. I was impressed!